


In the Shadow of The Beloved Child: A Look at Etymology and How it Defined My Family by Toby Ziegler

by thecolourclear (afinch)



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Family Issues, Gen, Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-09
Updated: 2006-11-09
Packaged: 2018-11-07 12:48:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11059305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afinch/pseuds/thecolourclear
Summary: Jules, it meant youth.Toby talks about his family, in particular his relationship with David and their father.





	In the Shadow of The Beloved Child: A Look at Etymology and How it Defined My Family by Toby Ziegler

When my first sister was born, my parents named her Miriam, or bitterly wanted, for they had tried for years to have a child. They named her also for strength, in the hopes that she would guide our growing family with it. Odelia quickly followed her, named as a way of praising God for another miracle. My mother said God understood the child's need for the name. Quickly following Odelia was Naomi – another miracle; a miracle the rabbi told my parents would be a boy. No one mentioned the more than slight disappointment the family faced, though no one would admit there was disappointment at all. It was still a joy to have her around, though I suspect that even after all these years, my mother still wishes she had been a boy. Nevertheless, she did get her wish, eventually. Tobias, Christmas Eve, six years later. The only thing my father could think about was how wondrous God had been to him that night. The end of that night, he must have been thinking how God had abandoned him; he certainly talked about for decades afterward. Not even two years later, when I looked at my father with such little-boy disdain, my father (just a few short months from jail) only smiled at me and touched the nose of my little brother David, pronouncing him as the beloved child.

David had few memories of our father during his young age, but I had those memories of David being 'the beloved' and spoiled as such. I realised, much later of course, that my father's affection towards David was probably because he was in the middle of a trial and everyone knew he was going to spend some time in jail. It was David who could (and did) love him the most purely.

It was my sisters who had the happy memories, and I who had the bad memories – my first memories – feelings of such disdain. I could never share in their laughter of the man whom I struggled to call 'Father'. While he was gone, it was all they could do to hold on to those memories and count the days until he came back; I counted the days he had been gone, ticking them up on a square sheet of paper taped next to my bed. 

David and I threw ourselves into school, I threw myself into the understanding of the legal document that had put our father in prison and David into the exploring of everything our father could not touch – everything the man had never had the courage to leap for; David looked to the stars. It was something we shared, something precious in common; sometimes it was the only thing that held us together.

When my father came back, I was too old to do all the little boy things that fathers and sons bond over. David, still playing his role as the beloved, acted along with our father. I sat at the kitchen table and corrected Miri's Advance English paper for grammatical errors. Delia thought I should just be a good Jewish boy and forgive our father, as our father had asked for forgiveness. I thought forgiving was not that easy when you were the forgotten child, even now, I struggle to understand the concept of giving and receiving forgiveness, as it is rarely deserved. Miri, Delia, Naomi, David, they were all in our father's hand, in some secret world that I did not know how to penetrate; I was invited all the time along to this world but I preferred the simple comforts of the kitchen table and English assignments. In some small way, I preferred the quiet of my own alone: withdrawn, sad.

I flourished there, at that kitchen table; David in the searching of fulfillment for something our father had failed to give him. I went on to write and manage campaigns – working for the greater good. David reached to the stars, the one place he knew our father could not touch. Yes, he had played a part, but there was still that something missing, that something only I, his older brother understood; for as much as we didn't get along with one another, as much as we fought about who was smarter, we still shared that one common thread of not having a father for our childhoods.

We drifted, as families do, with me falling further apart from all of them. They attended Halloween parties, Christmas parties, and barbeques. Even David, when not covered in research, attended – once he even managed to bring his girlfriend (later fiancée) along. He visited Huck and Molly once, smiled, called them beautiful, did his uncle duty. We did not mention that Josh had set me up with our father; we did not mention it, though our father had mentioned it to everyone. We did not mention those demons from our childhoods, from being two scared little boys growing up without a father to guide them; two little boys left to find their own in the world.

I did not mention those demons again, not until the day I received the phone call that my baby brother, the beloved son, had cancer. Our father was shocked; Miri, Delia, Naomi, they were all shocked. I could not find the words to be shocked; I could not find the words for adequate enough comfort, once again my family had a club, a world, the care about David world, which I could not penetrate. This time, it was not for lack of trying. Quickly after there had been the suicide; David had left me alone with my demons, the demons of our childhood that every now and again would crop up. The only thing I could think to do was go over to David's house, and hold the little girl David had unconventionally (and following the fad of the moment) named Ezra. She would know the demons I had grown up with, the demons that still crept into the edges of my dreams and would not leave. She would know what it was like to have a father fragmented, gone, of the early memories that were anything but happy. She would never understand the world of Happy David Memories and I would be there to tell her that it was all ok.

When I was facing jail, and my children were facing childhoods without their father, the irony of the situation was not lost on me. Still, I did not allow my father to offer him me comfort, I did not allow my father into any part of my life. This, this I did alone; bore the burden of a choice to protect the people David had run to in order to escape our father. There was amount of manipulation any of my sisters or my mother used that could get me to budge and allow Jules in. Jules murdered men, I only sought to defend them. When the pardon came through, I used it as an excuse to never see my father again. Jules, still suffering from the painful loss of his beloved son, silently agreed; two months later, his passing was quiet, calm, unnoticeable. Jules, it meant youth. Everyone else in my family managed to live up to the etymology of their name; even I had managed to find for myself the wonder of G-d. It came in pardons, two beautiful children, rekindled love … rekindled faith. How did Jules live up to his name? He only sought to destroy it; everything youthful my father touched, died.

I did not attend the funeral.


End file.
